Camping

Sunday, 22 September 2013

I'm heading out for a week in Yosemite Valley tomorrow (with a way-station of a couple of days with my brother-in-law in Fresno). I'll be participating in Facelift (my second time), an annual event where you get to clean up the valley. This mostly involves walking around one of the most beautiful places on earth picking up trash. No worries, we get issued Orang-a-Tongs: orange grabbers that are capable of easily picking up miniscule amounts of trash (usually toilet paper!). It's a lot of fun (really!) and it's quite rewarding on multiple levels.

In the evenings there are great programs and connecting with other friends (new and old) from the climbing community. The great thing about climbing is that you can very easily and regularly hang out with the giants of climbing. I'm talking Kobe Bryant level here folks. But without the entourage and the attitude. Note that the giants of climbing don't make the Kobe bucks; they are usually living in vans (not down by the river... unless it's a choice bivy spot).

I'll have the mobile posting station with me. With a bit of luck, I may actually get something out. It's going to be fun. I'm not sure exactly how (there are always delightful surprises), but you can count on it. I know it in my bones.

Thursday, 05 September 2013

I've never had any desire to attend Burning Man (which just de-playa-ed around Labor Day). The following has been making the rounds (this means I didn't create it and I don't know to whom to attribute it). Captures my sentiments in a funny and spot-on way:

Not going to Burning Man?

Here's how to enjoy Burning Man from the comfort of your own home...

Pay an escort of your preference to not bathe for five days, cover themselves in glitter, dust, and sunscreen, wear a skanky neon wig, dance naked, then say they have a lover back home at the end of the night.

Tear down your house. Put it in a truck. Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back together.

Invite everyone you meet to come over and party. When they leave, follow them back to their homes, drink all their booze, and break things.

Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room. Put on your most fabulous outfit. Turn the fans on full blast. Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.

Buy a new set of expensive camping gear. Break it.

Lean back in a chair until that point where you're just about to fall over, but you catch yourself at the last moment. Hold that position for 9 hours.

Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away. Drain all the water from the toilet. Only flush it every 3 days.

Hide all the toilet paper.

Set your house thermostat so it's 50 degrees for the first hour of sleep and 100 degrees the rest of the night.

Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.

Spend thousands of dollars and several months of your life building a deeply personal art work. Hide it in a funhouse on the edge of the city. Hire people to come by and alternate saying "I love it" and "dude, this sucks". Then burn it.

Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire. Play a short loop of drum'n'bass until the embers are cold.

Make a list of all the things you'll do different next year. Never look at it.

Have a 3 a.m. soul baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you're hallucinating.

Lust after Bugs Bunny.

Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body. Forget how you did it. Don't go to a doctor.

"Downsize" last year's camp by adding two geodesic domes, a new soundsystem, art car, and 20 newbies.

Don't sleep for 5 days. Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs. Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend, or both.

Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores for the perfect, most outrageous costume. Forget to pack it.

Shop at Wal-mart, Cost-Co, and Home Depot until your car is completelypacked with stuff. Tell everyone that you're going to a "Leave-No-Trace" event. Empty your car into a dumpster.

Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until you think you are going to scream. Scream. Realize you'll love the music for the rest of your life.

Spend 5 months planning a "theme camp" like it's the invasion of Normandy. Spend Monday-Wednesday building the camp. Spend Thurs-Sunday nowhere near camp because you're sick of it or can't find it.

Walk around your neighborhood and knock on doors until someone offers you cocktails and dinner.

Bust your ass for a "community." See all the attention get focused on the drama queen crybaby.

Get so drunk you can't recognize your own house. Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours.

Tell your boss you aren't coming to work this week but he should "gift" you a paycheck anyway. When he refuses accuse him of not loving the "community".

Search alleys until you find a couch so unbelievably tacky and nasty filthy that a state college frat house wouldn't want it. Take a nap on the couch and sleep like you are king of the world.

Ask your most annoying neighbor to interrupt your fun several times a day with third hand gossip about every horrible thing that's happened in the last 24 hours. Have them wear khaki.

Go to a museum. Find one of Salvador Dali's more disturbing, but beautiful paintings. Climb inside it.

Tuesday, 06 August 2013

Every summer, since Colin was about four, give or take, I've taken some combination of kids camping in the Eastern Sierra in July or August. We've settled into the routine of returning to the East Fork campground in Rock Creek Canyon (up the road from Tom's Place on the 395). It's a stunningly beautiful north-south canyon with easily accessible hiking, climbing, and pie shops (Pie in the Sky). At the top of the canyon, there's a 10,000 foot trailhead that opens up into the wide, five mile long Little Lakes Valley. Easy hiking, a bunch of interesting lakes, and some classic peaks (like Bear Creek Spire):

It also has excellent fishing: you can ask Uncle Jay more about that, since he's the expert (though it took him about three years to land a trout with Colin, but man, it was a beaut!):

We had Jay along for a few years and he is truly the master outdoorsman. Completely elevated my style of camp cooking; though I can't yet say I even come close to his level. A sample menu: venison (hunted by Jay or his family, of course), asparagus sauteed in olive oil and well seasoned, roasted potatoes, and an amazing wine reduction sauce. And an excellent bottle of wine, of course. If you've ever wondered what happens when you cross a metro-sexual with a redneck, that's Jay! Or maybe Burt Reynolds (before he went off the deep end!) meets the Daniel Craig Bond. You get the idea, anyway.

Anyway, this was going to be the year that everyone came, including Jennifer and Claire. But alas, Colin has come down with some kind of cough and fever business for the last week. He's doing better, but we don't want to push his recovery with a long drive and mountain camping. That's disappointing.

But it's not the end of the world. He'll stay home and get some extremely rare one-on-one time with his Mom. Jennifer gets a serendipitous stay-cation that allows her to dig into the some of the projects around the house on the list. And the girls get just Daddy on a big trip.

"Always changing, never twice the same..." (Robert Irwin). One of the beautiful elements of this world. I try to remember it every day. The dirtbagdad is always evolving. Sometime the movement is a few steps back, but in the long view, it's always forward.